page_title: Essenbæk Church
section_title: Old Essenbæk Church
hierarchical_section_title: Essenbæk Church / Old Essenbæk Church
caption_attribution_description: Dansk: Tegning af Gammel Essenbæk Kirke fra umiddelbart før den blev nedrevet.
context_page_description: Essenbæk Church in Assentoft is the parish church in Essenbæk Parish in Randers Southern Provostship in the Diocese of Aarhus.
context_section_description: An earlier church was built on a hill in the hundred Haldherred probably in the 12th century, and is known from the 13th century as Essenbæk (Eskingbec) - a name which perhaps refers to the present Volkmølle Creek (Volkmølle Bæk). The first particle esking supposedly means an inhabitant of Assentoft, but the creek seems later to have been named after a fulling mill (valkemølle), which in time, however, was used as gristmill.
  
  The church was first built in Romanesque style as a nave and probably a chancel – internally consisting of granite boulders built around raw fieldstone, and externally of granite ashlars. On the northern and southern side of the church were a simple rectangular entrance, and the ceiling of the church was flat and plastery. Later the chancel was torn down, after which the eastern end of the nave, demarcated by an ogival chancel arch, was used as such, and the northern entrance was walled up. Probably also later a small round arched window was established on the northern side, and a steeple resting on five pillars built into the nave and with pyramid roof of lead was added above the southwestern corner of the church. A church porch at the southern entrance and a groin vault seem added in the 15th century. Then the church was internally 31¾ alen (19.93 meters) long og 12¼ alen (7.69 meters) wide. The church stood in the northwestern corner of a ca. 65 meters long og 65 meters wide churchyard fenced in by a 1.5 meter high boulder dike, southwesterly in which was a driving gate and a walking gate in a whitewashed portal in late Medieval style of large medieval brick. 
  Already September 4, 1424 the church was called Old Essenbæk (Gamel Essenbæk; Gammel Essenbæk), and was then owned by Essenbæk Abbey, which together with its estate was confiscated by the king in 1540. When the abbey was later torn down, its bell was taken to the church.
  Christen Skel Jørgensen bought September 7, 1678 ”the church’s share of the tithe of the mentioned parishes, the appurtenant easement over the parsonages and the smallholdings of the parish clerks and all of the churches’ adjoining land estate and other appurtenant easement and the right of presentation” (Kirkens Andel af Tienden af de nævnte Sogne, Herligheden over Præstegaardene og Degnebolene og alt Kirkernes tilliggende Jordegods og anden Herlighed samt Kaldsretten) including e.g. Essenbæk Parish. With this so-called right of patronage he was in reality the owner of the church, though with the responsibility for its condition.
  When the art historian N. L. Høyen in 1830 visited Essenbæk Church, he drew e.g. its baptismal font. However, when in the summer of 1865 the architect Johannes Frederik (Frits) Christian Uldall visited the church, there stood another baptismal font – this one in Baroque style of wood, and representing a kneeling figure bearing a basin.
  In the autumn of 1865 the then decrepit church was torn down, but the churchyard was preserved, and was used some years still. Some of the church’s furniture, including 10 of the triptych’s figurines representing the 12 Apostles, were sold at auction, but the figurines representing the apostles James the Just and Peter were taken by the mason N. Schunck, who participated at the demolition. In 1894 he gave them to Randers Museum, and two years later Countess Christiane Scheel gave the triptych’s figurines representing Christ and Mary to the museum. In 1910 a monument was erected on the churchyard, and in 1971 wooden gates were added to the then tile-hung portal in the churchyard dike. Around the monument, the corners of the church are indicated now by edge-raised natural stones.
caption: Old Essenbæk Church in ca. 1865.[1]
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